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IPM — Part 3 (Third In A continuing Series)

Integrated Pest Management Update

Canadian City Could Serve as Model for IPM

By Randy Gaddo

Editor’s Note: This article is part of an on-going series about Integrated Pest Management programs aimed at minimizing, not eliminating, the use of pesticides on sports fields and other public property. The author is the Director of Leisure Services in Peachtree City, Georgia, and he is taking us play-by-play through his efforts to formulate an effective IPM program for sports fields.

Integrated Pest Management is a complex issue, but one thing is clear: the Canadian city of Oshawa takes its pests seriously.

As a result of a recent Parks & Rec Business article about our quest for knowledge for the perfect IPM program, Tanya Steffler contacted me and offered her expert advice on the subject.

Tanya is the Pest Management Program (PMP) coordinator in Oshawa, an Ontario Province city located on Lake Ontario, about 50 miles east of Toronto. It is a dynamic city of 150,000 that began as a fur-trading post in the early-18th century. Today, Oshawa is an enterprising urban center, experiencing growth in every sector. Recog-nized for environmental awareness in many areas, Oshawa won the 2004 International Communities in Bloom Award.

Tanya was hired by the city nearly three years ago. With a diploma in environmental technology and a degree in plant biology, she was well qualified for the job. Her hiring marked a watershed in the city’s efforts to be more naturalistic in its approach to grounds management. But the road to the city’s IPM goal was not a short one.

The Early Years

Prior to 1991, according to city documents that Tanya provided, turf and landscape areas within the city were regularly treated with pesticides. Then in 1991 City Council directed that the turf management process be modified. The changes included use of biological controls, a reduction in the frequency of grass mowing, an increase in cultural turf improvement programs and a reduction in the pesticide application schedule. These guidelines were, in essence, the beginning of an Integrated Pest Management program, although it was not called that at the time.

However, Tanya cites 2001 as the year things got serious. “June 2001 was when the Supreme Court of Canada upheld a by-law enacted by the town of Hudson, Quebec, that prohibited non-essential use of pesticides,” she said.

Following that court action, the Quebec government took further steps. According to Oshawa documents, Septem-ber 3, 2002, marked the first day of a three-year phased provincial ban on the cosmetic use of 28 select pesticides in Quebec.

In year one, the ban applied to public land, schools, daycare centers and hospitals.

Year two included a ban on combined fertilizer-pesticide products for use on private property. A complete province-wide ban, excluding farm applications and golf courses, followed in year three.

In 2001 the pest control program in Oshawa was reviewed, and all non-essential chemical pest control was suspended. This interim suspension was implemented in anticipation of extensive reform in the landscape industry, shifting public attitudes concerning the application of pesticides and potential changes to the municipal jurisdiction in order to regulate public use of pesticides.

Oshawa’s Eight Key IPM Elements

On February 25, 2002, Oshawa City Council directed that a Pest Management Program for municipal property be developed. Eight key elements for the program were identified:

1.) Integrated Pest Management (IPM) procedures, with the intent of developing a process that used a combination of techniques to suppress pests below predetermined threshold levels.

2.) IPM quality standards that would establish criterion to manage landscape pest levels. This created a threshold of acceptability beyond which the use of cultural controls would not be sufficient to control the pests, and pesticides would be considered for use.

3.) Alternative landscape treatments for specific property classifications, which basically defined areas where it simply wasn’t necessary to have turf that required intensive maintenance procedures such as pesticide application.

4.) Expanded education and outreach programs designed to educate the public on the important aspects of pesticide use.

5.) Land-development standards that considered IPM in the planning process for development of new private or public land. Issues such as soil depth, structure and quality, plant material selection, percentage of hard surface area, acceptable details for paving materials and tree protection were reviewed as part of the city’s landscape-design standards.

6.) Parks capital upgrades that sought to improve turf and landscape quality, such as adding irrigation or improving drainage and soil quality.

7.) Limiting parks facility permitting in order to reduce the wear and tear on turf that ultimately can lead to pest problems. An overall reduction goal of 30 percent was targeted.

8.) Provision to hire an IPM coordinator, which led to hiring Tanya.

Ultimately, the City Council decided on a phased approach to developing its IPM program that spans 2003 through 2007. Year one included retaining the Guelph Turfgrass Association, turfgrass experts, to conduct a study of the sports fields within Oshawa and write a report with recommendations for the PMP. The IPM coordinator, to administer the rest of the program, was hired in the second year of the program.

Not Just Talking Points

The plan has teeth too, in the form of funding. At the time of implementation, the Council was spending about $59,000 per year for pest control and cultural turf care. The first year budget for its IPM program was $124,000, which included the $59,000, plus costs for beginning stages of the program, including staffing. Eventually, two skilled laborers were also hired to implement IPM procedures.

Program costs for fiscal year 2007 are projected to be $429,000. This would represent a full-fledged IPM program that entails all cultural and operational actions, as well as equipment and materials, needed to realize maximum benefits. This also includes three full-time staff. Over the five-year period, budgets averaged between $300,000 and $500,000.

It is clear from this level of support that the Oshawa government is serious about making IPM an effective part of its culture.

Even so, when Tanya first stepped into the job, she faced significant challenges. For one thing, turf on the sports fields and parks in the city needed work because they had gone so many years with little or no treatments. She said that the sports fields had very high weed populations, with thin and unhealthy turf, and she decided to focus her limited time and energy there first.

“I came across lots of problems when I first started,” she recalls. “There was not much information available about IPM. Although IPM practices were common knowledge, the products and application were fairly new to the industry. I spent a lot of time researching. I had to find suppliers for products and figure out what products to use.”

She adds that the IPM maintenance staff wasn’t hired until later on, so much of the required maintenance was delayed. Equipment was old or inadequate to move forward with a proactive program; equipment was identified, researched and purchased. With more equipment and additional material, a storage shed was required to protect and secure the items.

“Skilled labourers, Shane Sleep and Darryl Shaw, are responsible for all the PMP maintenance in the parks,” Tanya explains. “They work as a team to ensure all the products are applied in the correct amounts, when and where required. Both have related diplomas, are very knowledgeable in their field, and take pride in their work. The Pest Management Program would not be a success if this crew was not as dedicated as it is.”

The Problems And Tools Of Change

Another problem, and one with which most parks and recreation professionals will identify, is that users were not willing to change their ways and stay off fields when required.

“People were still playing on the fields after they were over-seeded and fenced off,” she says. “We actually sodded a field, came back the next day and a group had rolled the sod up, put it to the side and played on the bare soil.”

She related a situation that many parks and recreation grounds managers face. User groups want to get on fields early in the spring when soil is saturated and before turf is even greening up in many cases. Turf gets damaged and there’s no time for it to recover. Then they want to stay on the fields late into the year after turf has gone dormant. It doesn’t take long for this type of abuse to ruin fields.

But now the city has established thresholds for weeds that dictate what type of treatment they need. For sports fields, the tolerance level for weeds is 20 percent; high profile areas like City Hall, 30 percent; neighborhood parks, boulevards, cul-de-sacs, traffic islands and landscape buffer strips, 60 percent; passive areas, not applicable unless toxic weeds are present.

How did they come up with those percentages? What was the formula? Well, that isn’t an exact science. There are certain common-sense guidelines, such as the percentages have to be reasonable, agreeable to a majority of the people, supported by City Council, and flexible enough to change if the situation calls for it. There isn’t a magic formula you can plug numbers into and, poof, out comes the answer. It’s going to vary from place to place depending on the will of the citizens and elected government, and the quality of turf required for the end use.

“The actual numbers were played around with a bit,” she says. “We asked, ‘What is a realistic number (is there a benefit to spraying boulevards with a 30 percent weed density), what causes a tripping hazard, how will people respond with the numbers chosen?’ These questions were asked and our numbers derived. The threshold level will be revised after the initial five-year program and adjusted if required.”

The overall turf quality on 42 soccer fields has improved, and Tanya has been able to move the PMP into the public education phase. This effort aims to encourage businesses and private citizens to move towards their own IPM program.

Tanya says they hired a marketing firm to produce a color brochure that was distributed to thousands of city property owners. They also produced posters, newspaper articles and radio ads to promote the effort.

Calendars were mailed out, and available for pickup at various city facilities. “The calendars covered two-month periods and had information about products, maintenance tips, coupons and monitoring times for different pests,” she says.

She even created a web site (www. oshawa.ca/mun_res/pest.asp) that is linked to the city’s web site. It contains all sorts of helpful information, mostly geared to homeowners, but also applicable to parks and recreational professionals.

She also appeared on local TV and radio shows. “The city held a ‘dandelion derby’ to get people to dig up dandelions, bring them in to be weighed and win prizes, in an effort to show people that physically removing weeds is a proven method of controlling them,” she says.

The Public Response

The public response thus far has ranged from one extreme to another. “Some people are upset thinking there’s a by-law to regulate pesticide use... there’s not one, yet,” she says. “Some ask me to talk their neighbors into stopping use of pesticides... I can’t do that, they still have a choice. Then, there are people who are very happy that we are doing something.”

What’s next for Oshawa and Tanya’s program? She says training and educating people and promoting the program will remain high on her “to do” list. There is talk of a pesticide ban in the city, which would make it even more important for people to know alternate ways to care for grass and plants. At the end of the five-year program, a report will be written to Council supporting the need for the PMP to continue. The most current council direction is for staff to develop a public process to develop an Oshawa pesticide elimination program to private property.

City Council has been updated annually since the program started. The results on the turf are astonishing. There are currently 76 Ontario municipalities that have introduced a partial- or full-pesticide ban and another 15 by-laws are in the draft stage. Although we feel a pesticide ban is eminent, the results of the PMP will support the need to include pesticide application when necessary in order to maintain high-quality turf.

(Editor’s Note: Tanya is also exporting her knowledge of IPM to the U.S. She will be a featured speaker and panelist in December at the Georgia Turfgrass Association’s Turf-grass Institute and Trade Show. She was invited to participate after the event organizers read about her program in Parks & Rec Business.)

Randy Gaddo is Director of Parks, Recreation and Library Services in Peachtree City, Georgia, and a frequent contributor to Parks & Rec Business. Watch for his IPM updates in future issues. He can be contacted at rgaddo@ptcgovernment.org.